Degenerative Stained Glass

You know that age-old cliche, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Luke Wallace never thought he'd answer that question with a description of his current situation, standing behind a stranger and struggling to decide whether to swing twenty-four inches of corroded iron at the head or knees. 

To now find himself in such a situation meant he’d experienced some sort of sick death. A week ago, he would’ve argued that death had occurred the moment the lights from his lenses went dark. Some part of him had indeed died when those framed glass ovals deleted their HUD and crumbled to pieces. Yet given his current circumstances, he now considered what he did six seconds ago closer to a "sick death." The moment he'd picked up the rusty metal pipe, Luke Wallace knew that he wasn’t the same person he’d been six days ago.

He wiped one of his soaking wet hands on his pants. The pipe tilted as he struggled to keep it upright. He swore he felt rust seeping through his skin into his blood. 

So many extremities had happened to him that those memories jumbled into a mess when he tried to think about them. He'd survived losing access to his lenses. He'd lost everything he'd owned. He'd overcome confinement in the city's government-regulated “dark zone” for six days. But, his aching intention to strike the man before him stood out as the most extreme of all those situations.

What could have possessed Luke to stoop to this point? He passed the pipe from one hand to the other and back so he could dry both on his pants again.

One might think Luke’s mental spiraling had begun four minutes ago when a stranger had walked into the dark zone. The man - still wearing his lenses - had no right to be here. They had the rest of the city to walk around in. Why’d he have to come here? Luke himself had been near a few of the original instigators who’d riled a small mob against the stranger. A few minutes later, he’d found himself picking up the pipe from the sidewalk on his way to teach Mr. Lens a lesson.

In reality, the death of Luke’s rational thought had begun six days ago he lost everything. He couldn't believe how few decisions it took to ruin his life. It'd only taken two bad investments. Terrible investments. He'd never forget the image of all his money and credits plummeting to zero in the HUD before his eyes. The sound of the loud pop from his lenses still filled his ears with a hum. They’d crumbled to dust in his hands, stripping everything from him. He'd never stop feeling the last few electrical pulses from their dead frames.

Luke took another long look at Mr. Lens in front of him. He imagined himself dressed in the stranger's fine clothes, peering through his glasses. He felt the mob around him, screaming at Mr. Lens, shoving Luke forward.

If Luke were honest with himself and with the mob, he didn’t care that the man wandered into their zone. That he represented a double standard of perception and oppression. Sure, Luke remembered his house waiting less than thirty seconds to eject him onto the street. He remembered feeling invisible to every other human, losing the one way for them to see him. He remembered the fear of the police drone escorting him away from Darius’s apartment. 

“Get away from my door. Don’t make me say it again.” Darius had not even opened the door wide enough to see more than half of his face. “I’m disconnecting at the moment to talk to you for this long. And I won’t waste any more time on-”

While Luke remembered all those moments, they didn’t make him hate Mr. Lens like the rest of the mob around him. If anything, his intention to hit the man stemmed from his desire to take the lenses for himself. He wasn’t even sure if lenses could transfer from one person to another. For all he knew, they would self-destruct in his hands as his dead pair had. But that was a risk he’d take. He wanted - needed - to feel them on his face, needed to see the world through their glass again.

He gripped the pipe in both hands now. Was he supposed to swing it like one of those vintage baseball bats he’d read about? Sounded good enough to him. 

But his swing did not cooperate. Was it a hesitation deep inside his empty soul, or the sheer amount of sweat on his hands? It slipped from his grip completely and sailed well to Mr. Lens’s left without striking the target. 

The violent mob had held themselves back, sticking to threats and insults. It was like they'd decided Luke's pipe-wielding had indicated his leadership status. As the pipe left his hands, the mob crashed forward like storm surge, jostling Luke through its surf. They descended on Mr. Lens with a ferocity that reminded Luke of a video about jackals he’d seen a few years ago. They shoved him to the pavement and unleashed hell onto his body. 

Mr. Lens had been unaware of the jackal pack, making no move to defend himself.  Luke remembered his lenses filtering out nonessential objects and people. It allowed the wearer to focus on alternate information streams. He’d often seen shapes in place of people if he didn’t know them or had no need to engage with them. Mr. Lens more than likely never knew the street he’d turned on led to the dark zone. He was either the victim of lens malfunction or a lack of paying attention.

Why did this thought bother Luke as he watched Mr. Lens get beaten past recognition? Over the past week, Luke had thought a dozen times about escaping the dark zone and stealing a pair of lenses. But he hadn’t done it. He'd stayed in the zone, not risked his life to reconnect. Why?

Looking down at what used to be a well-dressed, nice-looking man, he wondered if this feeling of...something was what had stopped him. The universe had dropped a pair of lenses at his feet, but the feeling in his chest and gut felt off-kilter. Did he need them as bad as he'd thought before swinging the pipe?

The unmistakable sound of police sirens blared through the street. Luke’s heart stopped mid-beat. The fighting mob did not appear to notice as they continued to maul their prey. Luke watched the three drones rush toward them. At that moment, he also noticed the man's lenses a few feet from the dogpile of flailing limbs. Should he grab them now before the police hovered right above them? He might never get another chance.

As he stepped forward to pick them up, a voice boomed from the direction of the drones. 

“Halt your actions immediately!” It sounded colorless, stale.

The mob continued. Luke didn’t move an inch. His memory flashed to a similar drone escorting him to the dark zone. They would not hesitate to shoot if he even sidestepped the wrong way.

The drones circled them now like buzzards. Luke noticed other zone residents watching from a distance like they’d seen this a hundred times. The lead drone repeated its command, louder this time and accented by a blast of digital sounds. The mob finally scrambled off Mr. Lens, revealing the remains plastered to the street. 

As they crawled away, Luke wished he’d been looking in any other direction. Seeing Mr. Lens now produced both a spew of vomit and a return of the earlier feeling in his gut.  He was going to die today among these animals. He threw up again. He was one of these animals. Whether it had hit or not, he'd thrown the first blow. 

All three drones continued to circle the dozen mob members, cowering around Luke. They stared down with eyeless gazes. Blackness narrowed Luke’s vision to pinpoints, centering on the still-intact lenses. They lay close enough for him to hear their tiny electrical hum. The lead drone was issuing more commands while a second was crowding the group around him.

He saw blue lights emanating from the third, sweeping over Mr. Lens’s corpse. The drone that had herded them together then performed the same procedure over Luke and the mob.

Luke imagined himself sliding the lenses onto his eyes. What good would they event do him? He’d been so sure about taking them, so ready to have a pair back that he’d never thought about what he could do once he got them. He still didn't know if they were transferable. And what about his fortune from before? He’d lost everything. Whether he obtained a new pair or not, the world wouldn't be the one he remembered.

“Eleven matches.”

The lenses on the ground before him had represented a way to connect back to his former life. If this pair couldn’t give him that, were they any use to him? A feeling of dread constricted Luke’s chest. He looked again at the remains of the man who’d wandered onto this street a few minutes ago. If those lenses couldn’t give him what he wanted - if he didn't even want them anymore... "Oh God, what have I--"

“One. Two. Three.”

Gunfire. It erupted all around Luke as he remained frozen in place. Bodies flailed and crumbled all around him, threatening to knock him over. They piled on his feet. Though the shooting stopped, he felt a weight pulling him down. A man, blood pouring from his mouth, grasped at Luke’s legs. Luke felt the man’s fingers squeeze tighter and tighter on his calves and then fall limp.

Before the last body hit the ground, the drones glided away in silence. The other residents of the street commenced their daily routines. Luke's ears buzzed from the shooting as he looked over different parts of his body. No bullet wounds. The only blood caked to his clothes and face came from everyone else.

The pipe he’d been holding minutes before leered at him from teen feet away. It lay as non-threatening and useless as it had been in his hands. Realization crossed his mind. His fingerprints. That's why the drones had scanned Mr. Lens. They'd been looking for the fingerprints of the killers. While Luke had made the first strike - poorly-aimed and non-lethal - his fingerprints hid all over that pipe. They weren't on an inch of Mr. Lens’s corpse.

His vision started to spin. With a bit of effort, he managed to wade out of the heap of pin-cushioned, mangled bodies surrounding him. His pants legs felt warm and clung to his legs. Glancing at Mr. Lens’s body, Luke knelt and picked up the pair of lenses. They tingled in his hands and sent pulses up his arms. The warmth felt like home, and for the first time in a week, he felt the reconnection he’d been obsessing over.

He studied the glass within the dark green frames. He moved them around in his hands, watching specks of blood leave red trails in the transparent ovals. He watched warm tears drop onto the glass and coalesce into thin, muddled pools.

Luke Wallace held the lenses near his face, staring through their red-stained glass at the lifeless body of their former owner. And he wept.